With so many streams going on over the past 2 days, I've summed up some things to expect in ME:A MP now. ME3 players will notice the subtle changes to the game, and improvements from 5 years ago:

- 26 characters at launch, 5 maps. The base characters are the 12 human classes, Male & Female version of each class (Adepts, Vanguards, Sentinels, Soldiers, Infiltrators, Engineers). The other 14 characters must be unlocked through the store via credits.

- All characters must be leveled up individually! In ME3, if you used a Salarian Infiltrator to level 20 and didn't touch the other Infiltrators, they all got to level 20. Not the case here, you must level up each character through playtime and store cards.

- Character cap is level 20, HOWEVER, each character can get 10 ranks. Confusing? Of course it is. Levels are what you get for playing the game, and XP. Ranks are attributed to how many character cards you received from packs. Each RANK, unlocks something new, such as gear color & pattern customization...which were in ME3. What is new, is you will also get free skill points at every other rank (all the even ranks). That's 5 ADDITIONAL skill points to put into your characters. Levels only unlock skill points to make your character stronger.

- Promoting characters is gone. No more resetting a character for some arbitrary rank, although the game does allow you to reset your character to level 1 if you want to... you don't get anything for it this time though. Instead, there are 5 Bonus Stats in the game that all characters share. Each character is assigned 1 of the 5 new Stats (Max health, Max Shields, Regen speed, Recovery delay reduction & Power recharge speed). Every time you use a character, assigned to 1 of these bonus stats, it ranks up. When you unlock a bonus stat, it's good for ALL chararacters.... not just the characters with the stat, but every character. This promotes using different classes. These stats take MILLIONS of XP to rank up, so the design is for you to use many classes, multiple times.

- 7 waves now instead of 11. Waves 3 & 6 are objective waves for money, Extraction is the 7th wave. Extraction wave is once again tied to credits, so you will need full extractions for full credits.

- Objective waves are ranked in the game...gold, silver, bronze. Finish them fast for a gold reward = more XP.

- Consummables are capped out now at 4 per character, ME3 started with 5 and then bumped up to 6. So that's a max of 4 rockets, 4 medigels etc. You start the game with 2, and will need to unlock more with cards via the store.

- Guns go up to rank 10 like ME3, with cards as well. No difference there.

- Jetpacks add a whole new level of verticality and mobility to the game. You can do a Nove type smashing melee with any character. Light & heavy melees have been removed, so you no longer hold the melee button for a stronger melee. It's just a click of the melee to hit an enemy.

- Powers have singular cooldowns, not universal. So if you use Incinerate, that doesn't prevent you from using Overload now.... it just prevents you from using Incinerate. People can spam all 3 powers at one time.

- Bronze rewards are about 10,000 credits. Silver is about 26,000 and Gold is 55,000. That correlates with the price of the packs you will receive.

- Game altered the min/max benefit of only taking the lightest weapon possible. Remember taking a Hurricane just to have the highest power recharge? No longer allowed, we need to have a secondary pistol attached. You can have 2 pistols, 1 primary and secondary, but you always need a secondary pistol.

- Level 1 characters do not only have 1 power unlocked. Bioware thought that was too punishing in ME3, so level 1 characters have all 3 powers available at the beginning.

- Apex Strike missions, can be from SP or MP, but the credits you earn can be used in both. Even better, there will be an app that allows you the ability to do strike missions from your phone. Connect your phone to your Bioware Account, and you can run strike missions over and over just from your phone.

- The Apex Missions can be run in MP, and offer rewards on a daily basis. There is a bronze, silver and gold and you either select your team to run them or you can play them in MP with other people. Bioware states that if you let the computer do these missions, they take about an hour to finish. And no guarantee they succeed. In Single player, you buy "teams" who run these missions while you do the campaign (think of Assassins Creed Brotherhood where you sent teams out on assassination missions), and in MP you send your characters out. MP XP and Credits are significantly reduced if you allow the computer to run them for you.

- Rockets are NOT a separate missile on your back. It's fired from your wrist, similar to how the N7 Destroyer fired his spread rockets in ME3. For obvious reasons, Bioware changed that due to all the glitching people were able to do.

APEX Missions reward you with Mission Funds, another currency that can be used in MP or the campaign. In the campaign, you can purchase AI teams that will fight for you, such as a Krogan strike team, Asari biotic team, Salarian infiltration team etc.

In MP, there are 3 parts to the in game store: Packs, Items, Rewards. Packs are the RNG packages that are purchased with credits for playing regular missions. Rewards are things you receive for either buying the super duper motherfucker edition, or the incoming weekly events they will have.

However, Items are things you can outright buy, such as RPG storage upgrades, Armor upgrades, reset character cards, and even unlocking weapons. These cost Mission Points, and are earned through APEX strikes.